Age: 68
Fortune: inherited
Source: Real estate
Net Worth: 4.5
Country Of Citizenship: Japan
Residence: Tokyo, Japan, Asia & Australia
Industry: Real Estate
Marital Status: married, 3 children
Real estate mogul leads Mori Trust, which owns and operates office and residential buildings, mainly in central Tokyo and other major Japanese cities. Also has 17 hotels, including newly opened Conrad Tokyo. He and his older brother Minoru Mori inherited initial fortune from their late father, which they split after a falling-out. The elder Mori isn't yet a billionaire because he reportedly has borrowed heavily to finance his showcase property developments, such as the Roppongi Hills in Tokyo, that have often let him steal the limelight from his younger sibling.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Akira Mori
Nintendo's Yamauchi
Soaring sales of Nintendo's Wii game machine have made former Nintendo chairman Hiroshi Yamauchi Japan's richest man, worth $7.8 billion, Forbes magazine said in its annual rankings.
The net worth of Hiroshi, 80, jumped $3 billion in the past year -- boosting him from third place to surpass property tycoon Akira Mori, Japan's richest man last year, the magazine said.
Nintendo's Wii, with its motion-sensing controller and quirky games that attract casual users, has far outsold rival game machines such as Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 since its launch in 2006.
Shares of Kyoto-based Nintendo have more than tripled in the past two years, boosting the value of the company to around $79 billion, and the fortune of Yamauchi, who owns 10%.
Mori, whose Mori Trust is one of the Tokyo's biggest landlords fell to second spot with a net worth of $7.7 billion, the magazine said.
Kunio Busujima, the 83-year-old founder of pachinko gambling machine maker Sankyo Co. Ltd, was third with a net worth of $5.4 billion, Forbes said.
A new arrival to Forbes' Japan 40 Richest List is a 32-year-old Kenji Kasahara, who created social networking site Mixi, Forbes said.
Forbes said its rich lists calculations were based on public share prices and its own estimates of privately held wealth.
